The Marines climbed the hill together, in fellowship with the living and the dead. They come here often to remember their fallen brothers-at-arms.

First Sergeant’s Hill above the 5th Marines headquarters at Camp Pendleton is crowned with wooden cross memorials. One covered in sledgehammers honors Sgt. Matthew Abbate, a 26-year-old scout sniper who was killed in Sangin, Afghanistan on Dec. 2, 2010.

Abbate served with Kilo Company, the “Sledgehammer” for 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment during a brutal tour in the northern Helmand river valley, where poppy fields and mud-walled housing compounds were insurgent minefields.

The battalion lost 25 killed and nearly 200 wounded in seven months.

On Oct. 14, 2010, Abbate led Marines out of an enemy ambush. After several troops were gravely wounded by gunfire and blasts from improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, Abbate directed the counterattack.

Three from the battalion died that day. Others lived because of Abbate, who was fatally wounded two months later by shrapnel from a “danger close” coalition air strike. He was posthumously awarded a Navy Cross, the United States’ second-highest medal for valor in combat.

One Saturday morning this month, the Marines carried Abbate’s medal up the hill and attached it to his memorial cross.

“That’s where it belongs,” said Abbate’s stepfather, James Binion, who remained in the Fresno area during the gathering of Sangin veterans.

Many in the group were dressed in “Hella Sick Clothing” shirts printed with Abbate’s “Gunfighting Commandments.” One that he lived by was, “You don’t have to be blood to be family.”

The last time Schueman climbed the hill was to replace the crosses threatened by a wildfire that scorched the San Mateo area of the base. In the group that day was Kate Kelly, the fallen platoon commander’s sister, and a lance corporal who kept removing his prosthetic leg to reach the summit.

“I remind myself of that,” Schueman said, crawling on all fours at times through the dust and the heat, because of the steep ascent.

Among the severely combat-wounded who drove up the back way was former Cpl. Juan Dominguez, who lost his legs and an arm in Sangin. He waited in his wheelchair until the group gathered again on the crest of the hill.

Marines who served with Sgt. Matthew Abbate in Afghanistan before he died added his Navy Cross medal to his memorial at Camp Pendleton. (Gretel C. Kovach/U-T San Diego.)

Marines who served with Sgt. Matthew Abbate in Afghanistan before he died added his Navy Cross medal to his memorial at Camp Pendleton. (Gretel C. Kovach/U-T San Diego.)

“He was a very humble person, but everyone gravitated toward him because of his knowledge ... because of his ability to accomplish anything he set his mind to, and because he was absolutely fearless,” Carlisle later recalled.

On Nov. 24, 2010, when Carlisle was hit by shrapnel and the concussive force from double bomb blasts, Abbate was there. “He’s part of the reason I’m alive today,” Carlisle said. Abbate was “shielding us from enemy fire with his own body. Taking fire and shooting ...

“I never got to thank him for that.”

The Marines’ pilgrimages up the hill usually conjure difficult emotions. The sounds and smells of combat return with the memory of those who died.

Carlisle served in Ramadi, Iraq in 2005 and again in 2007. But the tour in Sangin was his roughest.

The insurgent bombs, so easily buried there in dirt paths and fields, inflicted gruesome wounds.

As company gunnery sergeant, Carlisle felt responsible.

He returned home a different man.

“After seeing your buddies, your Marines that you trained for the last year and a half, their bodies just shredded, their lifeless bodies staring at you. Or you’re holding them as they’re bleeding out and they’re begging you to save them ... you learn to be more compassionate,” he said.